Page 9 of Witness To Murder
CHAPTER THREE
Gerard/Morris Apartment
Chestnut Street, 5:00 p.m.
The wall around the hole that had once been the door to her apartment was blackened by the fire the explosion had caused. The door itself had splintered into numerous pieces and was scattered all over the living area inside the apartment. The odor of smoke lingered in the air, even though the flames had been extinguished almost immediately, before Leah even got the call.
Detective Lambert was already at the scene when they arrived. There were several other uniformed police officers and at least two more in plain clothes like Lambert. The fire department was just preparing to leave, except for the fire marshal; he and Lambert were in deep conversation.
Leah felt numb. This couldn’t be happening…and yet, it was.
“Were you expecting flowers from anyone?” her newly hired PI asked.
Leah laughed despite the fact that she felt more like crying. “No. I haven’t been sent flowers…” She laughed again, a sad self-deprecating sound, and shook her head. “Ever.”
He gave a nod. “I’ll talk to Detective Lambert and see what they’ve learned.”
Leah stood several yards away from her apartment, behind a ribbon of yellow crime scene tape. She sagged against the wall. The whole building had been evacuated, and residents were only now being allowed back inside. The neighbors who lived nearest to her eyed her suspiciously as the ribbon was moved aside foreach one to pass through. She was the only one who wouldn’t be moving beyond this point. The hole that had been her door was draped with two more ribbons of yellow crime scene tape. The ribbon hung like an X over the opening.
She had called Isla and left a message warning her about the explosion. Leah already knew exactly what her friend and roommate would say when she called back: Isla would insist she cared nothing about the personal items they might have lost. She only cared that Leah was safe and unharmed. And she was—physically, anyway. Her mind, however, was reeling. Her emotions were a shipwreck. How on earth had this happened? First the blind date from Hades, and now this!
Who sent a bomb hidden in flowers? There was something so very sadistic about the idea.
Her arms tightened around her torso. How was she supposed to react to all this? To feel? The one thing she sensed with certainty was that she had to find out why this was happening. And where the apparent danger was coming from.
Danger.Why in the world would she be in danger? She had nothing and knew nothing that was overly important or represented a threat to anyone. It was sad to say, but basically she was a nobody.
This could not be her life!
But then again, it wasn’t like it hadn’t happened before.
She closed her eyes and blocked the memories from nine plus years ago. That had been another life. This one was calm and sedate…boring, even. How could she possibly be relevant enough to anyone or anything to be in danger?
Yet somehow she felt exactly like one of the informants in a crime movie, where the bad guys were doing everything possible to stop her and the good guys weren’t sure they could trust her.
It was the most bizarre situation. Leah had done nothing wrong. She’d agreed to a date. A sort of odd one, to be sure—to meet someone at half an hour before midnight and wait in a closed, dimly lit dining room while he handled a bit of business. In hindsight, the whole plan was the very picture of a scene from a gangster novel. Why had she not considered the oddity of it all before agreeing? Was she that desperate?
No, Isla had been that desperate for her. Leah had never been the pushy type. Nevertheless, she appeared to be drawn to that very personality type. She was the one who went along. Her life was busy enough without shoehorning social activities into it. But her friends—Isla, in particular—had insisted she needed to get out more. One thing was certain: This was the last time she would agree to a blind date. Ever.
The next time she agreed to spend time with a potential boyfriend—assuming she wasn’t dead or in prison after this—she would set the terms. And she would do her homework. Her frustration wasn’t aimed at Raymond—not really. He had seemed like a perfectly nice guy. It was difficult to hold a grudge against a man who could very well have been murdered.
Don’t even go there, Leah.At this point, she had no idea what had happened to him. Kidnapped? Murdered? She shuddered.
As if her thoughts had summoned the two of them, Owen Walker and Detective Lambert started toward her. Her anxiety crept up a notch.
Just stay calm and tell the truth.
But that was what she had been doing, and look where that had gotten her. She stared at the hole of a door to her apartment, and her shoulders slumped.
Whatever else happened, and whatever it meant, the truth was all she had. The many and varied possible unknowns made her feel cold and alone. Who would do this to her? When she and Owen had arrived at her building, she’d been fairly certain she spotted the black sedan. With all the worries about theexplosion, she hadn’t mentioned it. There was no time to agonize over whether she was being paranoid.
There were bigger issues.
Who would send her flowers? More importantly, who would send her flowers with a bomb inside? This truly was so far over-the-top that she couldn’t even see it, much less begin to understand it.
But it was happening…to her.
“Mr. Walker tells me you have no idea who would have sent you flowers,” Lambert said as he came to a stop next to her.
